Nobody Can (NaPoWriMo day 19)

The Well of Wandering Companies,

The Towers of Silence,

The Four Daughters

(Virgins perhaps?)

The Way of the Guns,

the Djinn of Two Masters.

Inevitably, to our shame,

It is both sad

And terrible that,

Even if they wish to –

Nobody can hide forever

These days.

The Time to Choose

The

Time to choose,

Tiger Lily,

Is nearly here:

The sweet

Or the dark?

The demons that seemed

So glamorous earlier

Will have their pound of sin;

The words that sounded

Once delightful

Have their hooks in you.

Getting Past the Questions

No point in asking the doctors

How long we will need

To decide if there is

Something wrong with time.

Have there always been

These soul-quiet streams

From the seas of space

That stop the darkness

Getting in, that keep us from

Getting past the questions?

Time …

Thunder quietly stirs in

The dark music distances

At the end of the silver day tracks:

The one armed smith and

The eight-legged stormbringer.

A different crew walks the morning desert

Between directions, must be

Getting closer to the time

To visit the city I fear,

To use the words we never said.

Like the Embers

Fierce red light beaming down

From somewhere near-to-God

Walks across the audience and

We glow like the embers that

Ring the eyes of a hunting harrier.

Young Traveller

Gunpowder sky-sharks

Spun, crackled; are gone

‘Neath their magic sparks

We laughed, loved and shone.

But this is silver time

Passing on by –

The Blood

The blood,

The hours

They spill

So quiet,

So quick.

And they

Run, run, run

Like tears

From the sun:

The Wrong Kind

Wharf-pool water –

Century’s stagnant mirror –

Surface made of shattered

Butcher’s knife blades and

Shards of guillotine in a

Brick-sided drawer:

Let’s Raise A Glass

Let’s raise a glass,

Maybe more,

To the double-intensity,

Up on the stands,

Handlebar gladiators;

To the front-rows,

No-space tiptoe dancers.

Insomnia

After Mercy’s wine-sweet twelve,

There’s insistent, chain-gang

Routine-carousel one again.

The roads, skies and

Melody-hung rivers

Pour their silver,

Sinful invitations into

My reluctant-to-ignore ears.

The moon and the rainbow,

Still as distant  as they

Ever were.